Nothing Is True
by Cracon
Summary: Assassin's Creed AU - He leads her out of the alley and through the busy streets of Rome. Away from her old life, it seems, and towards something else entirely.


**Title:** Nothing is true  
**Author:** cracon  
**Rating:** R / Mature  
**Spoilers**: the Assassin's Creed games (AC, AC2, AC2: Brotherhood, AC2: Revelations, not AC3) and maybe some from Glee (I only watched up to and including S04E10, so everything up until that episode is fair game, should I use something)  
**Summary:** Assassin's Creed AU - He leads her out of the alley and through the busy streets of Rome. Away from her old life, it seems, and towards something else entirely.  
**A/N:** The initial idea came to me after I finished playing Brotherhood. (You can send your apprentices on a mission in Rome, called "Steal a Kiss," in which they have to discreetly court the 'adventurous wife' of a Templar senator to find out what she knows. Both male and female apprentices can be send on that mission, thus this idea was born.) The idea wouldn't let me go, so here we are.

I use Google Translator and Wikipedia for the languages I don't know. If there's something horribly wrong, please let me know.

Rating might go up in future chapters.

The ages are not necessarily correspondent to the ages these characters have in the TV show, but I'll try to keep them as close as possible and hopefully won't change things too much.

I won't (and can't) make promises about how often or when I update. This is my first multi-chapter fic (I'm more of a one-shot/multiple one-shots making up one verse writer), and I hope that by putting it online it will give me the final push to start writing more often again. This fic will be finished, no matter how long it'll take. (Famous last words, I know.)

Thanks and cyberhugs to Skywarrior108 for agreeing to beta this mess, and to Angelffxmaniac for bouncing around ideas. :)

**Disclaimer:** I own neither Glee nor the Assassin's Creed franchise, that much should be obvious.

* * *

**Prologue – All Roads Lead to Rome**

_**1502**_

She's running.

She's running as fast as she can. She can feel the ache in her feet and legs, her muscles burning every time her naked feet connect with the cobblestone; the frantic beating of her heartbeat, pounding loudly in her ears, makes it hard to hear anything else than her laboured breathing and the desperate _thud thud thud_ of her heart.

She chances a glance behind her, her long hair whipping into her face.

They're close and rapidly gaining ground on her.

Her head snaps forward again, tears beginning to sting her eyes as she makes her way through a small alley, almost slipping on a puddle of rainwater that hadn't yet evaporated after last night's downpour. She catches herself before crashing against a wall, and keeps on running—trying to command her legs and feet to move just that little bit faster so they won't get her.

The alley leads to a broad street, where she uses the hustle and bustle of the other citizens to lose her pursuers. She makes her way through the throngs of people, expertly dodging out of everyone's way, passing several shops, which would normally hold her interest, in a hurry.

She glances behind her again.

They are not quite as adept at getting through the crowd like she is. They're bigger, yes, but also heavily armed. The latter assures that most people step out of their way pretty quickly to avoid possible trouble with the law. They might not be as fast as she is, but they're not really losing ground either.

That split-second of inattention is all it takes for her to crash into someone, stumbling onto the ground, taking the other person with her. Her heart leaps into her throat, even as she gets back up again, only offering the stranger mumbled apologies, not even sparing them a glance, her only worries to get back to running.

They're closer now, their shouting is louder, their angry voices more distinguishable than before, and she can even hear the clinking of steel against steel and their heavy boots slapping on the streets.

She turns right into another alley, hoping that the sometimes maze-like design of the city will work in her favour, that she'll lose them after another turn or two, that she can go back to her father and forget this whole day ever happened.

Her hopes are squashed after she takes a sharp left.

At the end of the alley is a wall, at least ten feet tall.

She frantically searches her surroundings. No ladder. No window to escape into. Nothing to hide in. It's a dead end. How fitting, she thinks, even as her fear spikes higher and higher and her breath hitches in her throat.

The sounds of her pursuers gets louder, until their fast running tapers off into a slight jog and then a walk when they realise that she is trapped. She turns around slowly, faced with the sad reality that there really isn't an escape route anymore. She's the rabbit, they're the snakes, and in her mind she sends a silent prayer to her father. All she wanted to do was to help him, help him get better, make him proud. It's not his fault he fell ill or that the tax collector took more than usual, by yet another order of Cesare Borgia. He's a despicable man, her father once told her, constantly raising taxes to increase the Papal army, not bothering with the fact that many small business—the backbone of the Roman economy—would not be able to stand those outlandish taxes for long. As he predicted, a lot of shops closed, including the blacksmith he just started working for.

Now that her father was sick, and they used all of their remaining money for his medicine, she had taken to begging on the streets for food and money. Or, in extreme cases like today, she stole it.

It's not like she stole money.

_It was just an apple._

Nevertheless, after the first indignant shout of the cart owner, she instantly made a quick getaway. Apparently not quick enough though, because some of the guards that were on duty to keep an eye on the market place that day quickly took up the chase.

One of the guards chuckles darkly, and it makes a very cold chill run down her spine. He nudges one of the others, who is still bent over to catch his breath. The first guard seems to be the leader of the group, if the way the others listen to him closely is any indication. As soon as he finishes explaining something to them, five pairs of eyes snap to her, all of them paired with sickening smirks. Her uneasy feeling is back, and her head screams at her to keep trying to find a way to get away, to change her fate to something else than what those five men have in store for her.

She turns around to the wall again, frantically searching for small indentations between the bricks, a magical doorway, something, _anything_ that might help her climb that wall to escape.

They make their way towards her, slowly, seemingly without a care in the world. And they probably don't have any, really. Because every twisted thing they might do to her will be under protection of the law.

They're part of Cesare Borgia's army. She's just a stranger, a foreigner, a _straniero—_and, as of today, a thief.

She turns around again. They're only a few feet away. She can't understand a thing they're saying to her—she hasn't had the time to learn the language yet. And by the looks of it, there won't be any left in her future.

They have all shed their armour, their weapons lying on the ground, and now they're closing in on her. One of them, the leader, the biggest of them, has a small knife in his hand; he actually licks the blade once and kisses it, before he reaches for her throat. She struggles against it and tries to claw at his hand, but the cold steel against her face, breaking the skin and running once from her forehead, down her temple and over her cheek before coming to a rest just below her jaw, pressing against her throat and cutting into her flesh, as well as a hissed "Non ti muovere, o ti farò sanguinare come un maiale," in her ear make her stop._1_ The intent is clear, even if she doesn't understand him.

She sags back against the wall, swallowing hard. His hand on her throat and her heart still pumping frantically are making it difficult to breathe, but at least she is still breathing.

A second later she wishes she were dead. He uses his hand with the knife in it to push her trousers down and then the knife to rip her shirt open. (A young woman, a girl, alone in a city like this, often fares better when dressed as a boy, her uncle once explained to her. Especially when she's a foreigner. She lost her hat that kept her long hair at bay shortly after she started running.) By the way the other four are palming the rapidly growing bulges in their trousers it is abundantly clear what is going to happen to her. She casts her eyes skywards as a sob escapes her lips and tears begin to slide down her cheeks. Her captor leans closer, the stink of his breath hitting her nostrils, now forever ingrained in her brain, as he roughly licks away her tears and hisses another command at her. Probably to be quiet.

She closes her eyes tightly, because she doesn't want to see. She feels him kicking her feet apart to spread her legs, the blade of the knife, now against her inner thigh, serving as a silent reminder of what will happen if she won't obey. She feels the blade leave her leg for a second and the pressure on her throat lessen, only for the blade to return against her neck. She can feel his free hand between them, one-handedly opening the flap of his trousers, and then he's brushing against her.

_**It was just an apple. It was just an apple. It was just an apple.**_

Before he can go any further she distantly hears a thump, then a yell and what sounds to be a skirmish. The knife that was pushed against her throat falls away, clattering on the ground. The pressure of the man, which was the only thing that had left her upright, falls away, and she slides down the wall until she kneels on the ground. By the time she opens her eyes again and they adjust to the shadows, a lone figure stands in the alley with its back to her. All five guards are lying on the ground, the blood pooling underneath their unmoving bodies, dead.

Fearful eyes turn to the cloaked figure. Is it a saviour or something much worse than those five men combined?

It turns around, its face partly hidden by the darkness of the alley and a big hood. By the way it breathes, moves, and judging by the slight stubble on the part of the face she can make out, it is indeed a human—a man. She trembles as he takes a step towards her and she frantically pulls her tattered shirt together and her trousers up, hastily crawling backwards until her back hits the place where both the wall and an exterior wall meet. If he was able to kill five grown men in the blink of an eye, she'd rather not imagine what he has in store for her.

He frowns at her but steps closer again, extending a hand.

She isn't sure what he wants. Payment for his good deeds? She doesn't have any money, that was the whole problem in the first place. Except …

Her head hangs low as she loosens the grip on her shirt and it falls open again. When she reaches down to push at her trousers, she hears some mumbling and a second later the rustling of fabric. She blinks at him, confused when he pushes his cloak against her naked front.

She can see him better now, now that he is up close. There's a big scar over the right corner of his mouth, healed a long time ago, by the looks of it. He's handsome and possesses a certain ruggedness that is only underlined by his scruffy looks; he appears to be the same age as her father, and his eyes are a warm brown. He's giving her a small smile before he speaks to her, his deep voice a soothing timbre.

She frowns at him, confused once more.

He trails off when she doesn't react to whatever he just said. So he tries again. Nothing. He is silent for a while, before he simply gestures at himself.

"Io sono Ezio. Ezio Auditore da Firenze." He points at her. "E tu sei?"_2_

She swallows shallowly, relieved that he doesn't seem to be a threat but apparently simply asked for her name.

"Rahel."

He grins earnestly and helps her up, tightening his cloak around her shoulders, so that she isn't exposed anymore, before he safely tucks her under one arm and leads her out of the alley and through the busy streets of Rome. Away from the (dead) guards, away from the trouble she found herself in just mere minutes before. Away from her old life, it seems, and towards something else entirely.

"La liberazione di Roma è iniziata, Rahel."_3_

* * *

_1 Non ti muovere, o ti farò sanguinare come un maiale. - Don't move, or I'll make you bleed like a pig._  
_2 Io sono Ezio. / E tu sei? – I'm Ezio. / And you are?_  
_3 La liberazione di Roma è iniziata. – The liberation of Rome has begun._


End file.
